interest us, bring us neither benefit nor diversion. Even from the
point of view of reading for pleasure, we manage our reading badly. We
listlessly allow ourselves to be bullied by publishers' advertisements
into reading the latest fatuity in fiction, without, in one case out of
twenty, finding any of that pleasure we are ostensibly seeking.
Instead, indeed, we are bored and enervated, where we might have been
refreshed, either by romance or laughter. Such reading resembles the
idle absorption of innocuous but interesting beverages, which cheer as
little as they inebriate, and yet at the same time make frivolous
demands on the digestive functions. No one but a publisher could call
such reading "light." Actually it is weariness to the flesh and
heaviness to the spirit.

If, therefore, our idea of the best in books is the recreation they can
so well bring; if we go to books as to a playground to forget our cares
and to blow off the cobwebs of business, let us make sure that we find
what we seek. It is there, sure enough. The playgrounds of literature
are indeed wide, and alive with bracing excitement, nor is there any
limit to the variety of the games. But let us be sure, when we set Out
to be amused, that we really are amused, that our humorists do really
make us laugh, and that our story-tellers have stories to tell and know
how to tell them. Beware of imitations, and, when in doubt, try
Shakespeare, and Dumas--even Ouida. As a rule, avoid the "spring
lists," or "summer reading." "Summer reading" is usually very hot work.

Hackneyed as it is, there is no better general advice on reading than
Shakespeare's--

No profit is where is no pleasure taken,